The present invention relates to a surgical garment and method manufacture. More specifically, the present invention relates to a surgical garment having a reinforcement that overlaps the seams of the garment.
Hospital personnel engaging in surgical procedures generally wear sterile garments, such as gowns, to reduce strike through of the patient's body fluids. These garments may be made of a nonwoven disposable fabric or a woven reusable fabric.
Fluid strike through is undesirable because it may cause potentially contaminated fluids to contact the surgeon and other personnel and may also cause cross contaminated of the patient. The medical community has become more aware of the problems and dangers associated with contaminated body fluids because of communicable diseases, such as hepatitis and acquired immune deficiency.
With certain types of operations, such as eye surgery, the fluids are minimal and surgical gowns made of woven or nonwoven materials may be used without reinforcements.
However, for surgery that crates a great deal of fluid challenge, such as abdominal surgery, it is necessary to reinforce certain parts of the gown with a fluid impervious or resistant material. One reinforcement material that is commonly used is rayon laminated to a polyethylene film. The rayon makes the reinforcement material soft while the polyethylene film makes the reinforcement impervious to fluids.
Panels of this reinforcement material are generally added to the front of the gown and also to the lower portion of the sleeves. To assemble the prior art surgical garment, the front reinforcement is glued to the body panel material, and the sleeve reinforcement is glued to the sleeve material. The body panel and sleeve panels are sewn together with the garment right side out. The garment is then turned inside out so that the cuffs can be sewn to the garment.
Because the prior art sleeve reinforcement was glued to the sleeve material and the entire sleeve assembly sewn as one piece, these sleeves still had a problem with fluid strike through, especially at the sleeve seams.
Various types of seams are shown in FIGS. 9A through 9D2. Because the needle must pierce the fabric to sew the seam, there is necessarily a series of holes in the fabric panels. These holes may allow body fluids or irrigating fluids used in the procedure to seep through the holes created by the seam.
This strike through is also a problem even where a stronger seam has been created by folding the panel seam edges over each other and stitching through all fabric layers to provide a seam with a reduced tendency to rip, as shown in FIGS. 2. Since the stitches are sewn through all layers of fabric, i.e. through the fabric and the reinforcement and their respective seam allowances, the holes made by the needle still provide a direct route for fluid to travel from one side of the garment to the other.
Thus, there is a need for an improved sewing method for reducing strike through at the seams of surgical garments.